


Deep Secrets

by Merkwerkee



Category: Void Jumpers
Genre: Introspection, interstitial to s3 e6, spoiler for s3 e5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27373318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: Bryn reflects upon the times both good and bad on the Water planet as they leave it behind





	Deep Secrets

Bryn watched as the smoking wreckage of Last Shore faded to a dirty brown spot in an endless sea of blue as the dropship pulled away from the Water planet.

She wasn’t sorry to see it go, though the explosion had been jarring. It had been a bad place, full of evils both large and small, and she very resolutely did not cut her eyes over to the still-unconscious form of Gwennaig that rested in a seat nearby. The experimentation that had been conducted had been disgusting, and the monsters it had attracted - she felt a shudder pass through her as she remembered the feeling of the _thing_ that had been in her head - had been just the _worst_.

Bryn didn’t like water. There hadn’t been much of it when she was a child - certainly not enough actually swim in - and it felt cold. Alien. Unfamiliar. All planets had traces of other magics as well as their own signature wells of power - some more so than others - but on the Water planet, any trace of Fire had been buried deep.

Water was innately hostile to fire. It didn’t have enough free oxygen to sustain combustion, and quenched active flames. Then, too, was it resistant to changes in temperature; it took _so much_ energy, so much _more work_ to raise water even a single degree, that fighting it had felt like an uphill battle. The only Fire magics Bryn had been able to sense had been buried deep beneath the surface, and in little dots on the ocean floor - the rest of it was overwhelmingly Water, Water, _Water_. It had been oppressive even before they’d been sent to the ocean floor, and she could only hope she never felt that way again.

Then, too, so very _much_ had happened on the Water planet - almost none of it good. First Tag had gotten a brainworm, then she had, then she’d found her old friend Gwennaig, then she’d fought to save Olly, then that weird black-ooze place through the portal, and then she’d _died_ \- or so Tag had told her quietly afterwards, unable to meet her eyes. She didn’t remember much about that part, just feeling weird and grey and her father was there? That had been strange.

The brainworms had probably been the worst part. Tag _begging_ her with his eyes to help him while his mouth had smiled and told her he was just fine, thanks - she shuddered at the memory, though everyone else in the shuttle seemed to absorbed in their own thoughts to comment. She knew now what he’d felt then - not an erasure of himself, but a subversion of it. When the worm had been in her head, her worries had seemed strange and distant. Her priorities had given way to the priorities of the thing that had attached itself to her brain - and she hadn’t been able to care. Anything that hadn’t been of the brainworm or for the brainworm had fallen by the wayside like so much trash.

And yet the brainworm had given her such warm feelings of _kinship_ with those it also held sway over. It was a sense of belonging she hadn’t known since she was a small child with her mother and Variq; they’d been her whole world, and they had been enough for the first few years of her life. Once she’d looked around and realized how few friends she had, how far apart she stood from the other children - that feeling had broken, and she’d never properly gotten it back. She had grown independent and - occasionally - resentful of her mother, and Variq, creating the smallest of rifts that had grown wider until she’d been sent away to the Bloom planet to meet Summoner Langorium.

Variq. Bryn had tried not to think about him much while down on the Water planet. She couldn’t regret what she’d done to him, not after what _he’d_ done to her people, her planet, and her mother, but - they’d been family once. Close to it, anyway; he’d been her rock when she needed to speak to someone who wasn’t her mother when she was younger, and while he’d ended up tarred with the same brush of authority as her mother as Bryn had grown independent and rebellious, he hadn’t been a bad man then. Whoever had been in the throne room, whoever it really was that she’d turned to dust with a lash of fire - that wasn’t the Variq she knew. The Variq she’d known could never have done that, and she mourned the loss of the quiet, diplomatic man she’d known for her entire childhood. He’d been dead before her mother had even sent her a message, and she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.

Reminded of childhood memories, her eyes automatically sought the still form of Gwennaig - now beginning to stir - before she forced her gaze back out the window. Gwennaig had been an excellent friend and - she blushed at the memory - an attentive lover, but the things she’d said back in the facility…Bryn snuck another glance. Gwennaig didn’t _look_ that much different from the last time Bryn had seen her, heading into the travel station all by herself, and she had to wonder - had she ever known the real Gwennaig? How much of it had been sincere, and how much of it had been a big act, a bid to befriend her for her clout? At least the Professor had come clean about his mission to study her at the behest of the Company; Gwennaig hadn’t even done _that!_

Though Gwennaig hadn’t been the only person she’d learned a lot about on the Water planet; she snuck a glance over at Tag, who seemed to be alternating staring into space with shooting worried glances at Rex. Bryn could only imagine what was going through his head; the fact that he was only human on the outside was…something. He’d sounded so _weird_ in that Other place, and the things he’d done without even seeming to _try_ …It _scared_ her. More than a little bit.

And yet, he’d still saved her life after they’d gotten back. Bryn couldn’t remember much of it - something about moonberry pies? - but she remembered holding on to him, and him holding her back. Whatever he was, he was still her friend, he’d proved that. Actions spoke way louder than words, after all, but…She snuck another glance at him, and resolved to ask her mother about it. In hypothetical terms, of course; her mother would _freak_ if she found out her daughter’s parallel was a planet-eating alien from another dimension. Actually, that sounded way worse than she thought it had. She resolved to find a better way to phrase it as Every97 made a smooth bank and the Water planet slid out of view to be replaced by the familiar lines of Haven.

No, Summoner of the Fire planet Bryn did not like Water or the Water planet, and if she had her way she’d never return to this planet of secrets and lies buried beneath deceptively welcoming waves.


End file.
